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Ruby w/o Rails (and some basic questions)

I'm an experienced PHP programmer who's looking to learn Ruby for my next/future projects. I've read that it's best to learn Ruby before using Rails.
But in the future, is programming w/o Rails feasible/worthwhile in the long run?
Should I just assume my web server is Ruby enabled?

Yes, I happen to think that the future of Ruby lies in the fact that it can be used as a templating language, cgi, language, desktop programming and some other things just like PHP. If you start out the start out with eRuby and then later to Rails if you need it. With eRuby you can build your own framework without doing ssh, command line or any of the other nastiness associated with Rails and other frameworks.

Almost all web hosts support eRuby or are willing to set it up. Setting it up on your desktop is only a few minutes work.

I'm an experienced PHP programmer who's looking to learn Ruby for my next/future projects. I've read that it's best to learn Ruby before using Rails.
But in the future, is programming w/o Rails feasible/worthwhile in the long run?
Should I just assume my web server is Ruby enabled?

Totally. Ruby is a really interesting language, and has alot of hype around it because of Rails. However, the Ruby community is well aware that they need to keep pumping out interesting applications for Ruby to be more then a one trick pony.

Thankfully, the Ruby community are (to say the least) leaders in many of their fields and thanks to Ruby's duck taping ability, I think we will see alot more Ruby applications of significance in the future.

"A nerd who gets contacts
and a trendy hair cut is still a nerd" - Stephen Colbert on Apple Users